While in Swaziland with the Peace Corps, Kate Reilly spent time educating students at Siphocosini High School about sexual and reproductive health.

Law school graduates often plunge straight into jobs at law firms or in-house counsel positions after school. Catherine (Kate) Reilly chose a different path: after she earned her J.D. from the School of Law–Camden in 2011, Reilly NCAS’05, CLAW’11 joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Swaziland.

“I wanted to develop a career path that would enable me to live and work abroad,” Reilly says. “I had a lot of conversations with my Rutgers professors and advisers about doing Peace Corps, and I got a lot of encouragement. It’s not a very typical move out of law school, but I decided to go for it.”

From June 2012 through August 2014, Reilly lived in Swaziland—an African nation that is roughly the size of New Jersey but has a significantly smaller population. Her home was a small, private hut with electricity but no running water, and she worked as a community-health development volunteer, focusing mainly on HIV/AIDS education.

“In many ways, stepping away from America gives you a new appreciation for all the things we take for granted,” she says. “People have materially much less there than we do, but you realize that’s not such a bad thing. We can be overwhelmed by all the things we have to buy or do and forget to appreciate personal relationships.”

The experience also solidified Reilly’s interest in international work. In November, she started a job with the federal government, reviewing cases in the asylum division of the New York office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “I hope to work internationally in the future, too, whether that’s remaining in government work—asylum work, diplomatic work—or something else,” she adds. “I like exploring, and I definitely have the travel itch.”